Twenty-First Century Excommunication

You're not Anglican, says the Episcopal Church to congregations that split over its liberal doctrinal and political stances.

By
Mollie Ziegler Hemingway

October 7, 2011

When the Church of the Good Shepherd in Binghamton, N.Y., left the Episcopal Church over disagreements about what the Bible says about sexuality, the congregation offered to pay for the building in which it worshiped. In return the Episcopal Church sued to seize the building, then sold it for a fraction of the price to someone who turned it into a mosque.

The congregation is one of hundreds that split or altogether left the Episcopal Church—a member of the Anglican Communion found mostly in the United States—after a decades-long...